Guild Wars 2

I personally don’t care all that much about if GW2 becomes an eSport or not, but I am concerned about the general sPvP population right now which is IMO disproportionally small considering what is IMO a fairly fleshed out PvP game (in terms of gameplay not current PvP systems in place). I think most complaints about GW2 sPvP is more geared toward this than eSports viability.

The amount of people who actually make significant amounts of money in eSports is tiny relative to the playerbase and quite disproportional with the amount of complaints seen on the forums. There really aren’t many complaints about things like “hey, where can I watch some pro videos” or whatever, because nobody watches these things (look at stream numbers… viewership is abysmal). It’s more complaints about balance, queue times, etc.

Although I do feel for people who bought the game believing the game would be eSports-ready at release, I’m not sure if ANet ever actually stated it would be ready (at release that is). Although on the flipside I think it was obvious to everybody from day 1 that the correct pvp systems were not in place and it was woefully underdeveloped as a whole. These people could’ve simply got their money refunded once they saw this, but they didn’t because they had faith and thought they could get a leg-up on the competition if they stuck with it and got ahead of the curve while everybody else waited for these pvp systems to be put in place.

It is much much easier to get ahead of the curve early on when nobody takes the game seriously and dominate early tournaments than it is to be competitive in games whose tournament scene has matured and is oversaturated with top players like SC2. This is the incentive for these teams to stick it out. It is also fairly likely that if GW2 ever does become big and there are big cash prizes and sponsorships involved that the top teams you see today will not be the top teams you see in the future.

hooma.9642:

the bad system of hot join clearly show that there is a problem with mesmer and thiefs regardless what tpvp ppl think or do.. lowering the learning curve does not hamstringing high levels.

so even if u would implement all ur suggestions the problem still exist.. high reward low risk…
the whole problem is stealht and npcs.

i dont want to know how much high levels mesmers and thiefs are actualy “newbs” and only play on tourney carried by team and unbalanced class/build. a mesmer or thief need to bring the same amount of skill to kill something. they need to sacrifice the defense if the go berzerk.. what mesmers and thiefs because classmechanic dont do.

i already has suggest to implement a castbar.. but that would “harmstringing high levels” lol

Not really. You see so many thiefs/mesmers mainly because 8v8 is a zerg-fest between 2 unbalanced teams. Once it becomes a match-made 5v5 team of 2 equally skilled teams them I can pretty much guarantee the # of thieves/mesmers you will see will drop drastically.

The whole “easy to play at low levels” thing is so overblown and is a complete non-issue. Same thing in Street Fighter, noobs will pick up E. Honda or Chun-Li and buttonmash their way to victory, but is no big deal once people pick up the basics of the game. The bad design of hot join is 99.9% of the issue with a bad casual player pvp experience.

I really don’t think it will be a big issue once ANet gets all their PvP systems in place. I’m against having some bifurcated, convoluted ranking system. IMO it unnecessarily separates the player pool. Just having one individual rating is fine as long as they have custom servers up by then.

Hot join itself needs to go. It is simply a terrible idea and terribly implemented. Replace it with a matchmaking system comprised of solo-able queues. No more 8v8 zergs, no more uneven teams, no more team balancing, no more veterans stomping on new players. This will also essentially replace free tourneys, which is good as you don’t want to separate the player pool queuing unless you have to. Then adjust the rewards and recipe for creating tickets so that people can farm tickets in this new solo-able queue (but still allow premades but match with other premades – player pool should be big enough to do this).

Leave paid queues for full teams, and keep the ticket/barrier to entry low.

Modify the hot join browser into the browser for custom servers. Add as much options for the players to adjust the game mechanics as possible (e.g. allow the ability to create dueling servers, deathmatch servers, etc.) and suddently GW2 becomes a thriving PvP community.

@hooma

The issues are you having are more due to the bad system design of hot join, not mesmer and thieves themselves. Certainly cultivating new players is crucial but that does not mean you ignore all high level tPvP, that is nonsense. While an eSport scene needs casual audiences, a game must actually be balanced and fun at high levels as well.

What ANet should do is remove hot join all together, implement the matchmaking system (whenever they get around to that) so new players can solo queue with a big old obvious “play now” button. Make these games 5on5 just like regular tournaments which will dramatically reduce the zerging you see in 8v8s. No more of this uneven teams and team balancing nonsense.

Then they can use the current hot join browser and modify it to display custom games/servers (whenever they get around to that). Let players name their servers like “r30+ deathmatch” or whatever, and presto, there is your casual population explosion.

Smooth Marc.8743:

What is wrong with somone having a way leave a fight if they realize they’re going to lose?

If an elemetalist has to run away it’s going to be awhile before he can have a real shot at taking a point back.If you’ve forced an elemetalist to run then you’ve probably forced 3 cantrips,his elite and all of his 40 second off hand skills.If you’ve done all that the elementalist is not to going to be able to take the point by himself for at least a 30-40 seconds.

At that point the elementalist has to let you capture/neutralize the point or wait for a team member to help him recap.Meanwhile your team is 2-3 capping his team and winning them game.

I don’t understand why you complaining about not being able to finish a 1v1 when capping/nutralizing a point is your main objective.

Everyone seems to just focus on 1 aspect of Eles, when in reality the reason why everybody and their mother seem to be running double Ele comps in paids now are that they are good at almost EVERYTHING. Mobility, damage, sustainability, 1v1, team support and team fight, roamer, far point harass.

Now obviously that is supposed to be the Eles calling card with respect to their class mechanic, but IMO they seem to be a bit much at the moment. I definitely don’t think they need huge nerfs or anything though.

But the situation your describe is actually more like Ele is far point harassing, forces defender off point long enough to neutralize, depending on the defender Ele either kills the defender or it becomes a stalemate, assistance must come to get Ele off your point and Ele just RTLs to safety and will have a numbers advantage as now 2 players must rotate back. That is the far more common scenario because while 1v1 an Ele isn’t guaranteed to kill certain classes, those classes certainly can’t kill an Ele if the Ele unless the Ele doesn’t know what they are doing.

I think sigil of rage works very well with daggers for pvp but you have to be mindful of the CD and manage it with your weapon swaps. You can’t really compare it to averages over X amount of time because you’re not going to be staying in daggers 100% of the time. So long as you’re mindful of the CD on rage (and only have sigils with passive effects on your other weapon sets of course) and only swap to daggers when your burst cooldowns are up everything works out just fine and it procs all the time during my burst. Helps a lot with stomps too. It’s also one of the reasons why I’m such a big fan of Unyielding Blast (Life Blast piercing trait) since it allows me to dish out AoE damage from range in teamfights inbetween my burst cooldowns.

For a frame of reference the ICD for rage is also 45s which aligns nicely with your immobilize (25s) so that you can have it up every other time you spike.

Well you need some form of downed state overwise all strategy will devolve into spike comps. However I’m not sure what ANet was thinking allowing classes to still do substantial damage while downed, having completely unbalanced CCs/escape options amonst the classes and the whole point of rallying off kills.

Downed state should be a crippled state where you can’t move (or use abilities to move) and have a weak damage attack. You can add a weak CC for flavor or whatever but outside of that keep it simple. Downed players also should be able to contest points. Eles mistforming onto points to contest them is just bad game design.

Honestly I would make it so that you couldn’t rally at all.

And the downed states between classes have been so imbalanced for so long, it is starting to get silly.

The quicker you start treating shatter mesmers as though they were a meele class the faster you will learn to fight them. It’s nearly impossible to hit players from range with shatters, and if they use a staff as an offhand you have nothing to really worry about in terms of ranged damage outside of phantasms. And the iLeap to set up the shatter spike is very easy to spot if you’re at range as well.

Also I wouldn’t get too worked up over targeting. OP doesn’t list his class but many classes can just range/aoe down the Mesmers clones which really messes with their DPS. I would say the vast majority of players think the correct way to fight mesmers is to just find the real mesmer and try to spike him down in meele range, when in reality that is often the worst thing you can do.

@hackks

You don’t really grab UB for the vulnerability (that’s just gravy). You get it for the piercing ability. While the DS cooldown reduction trait is nice I don’t feel it is neccessary in a Power Dagger build since I always save DS 2 to combine with Dagger 3 (which has a longer cooldown) for my spike rotation and I always save my DS fear as an interrupt or peel. It’s not bad for DS 4 though.

I see cooldown reduction traits useful for skills you know you’re always going to be spamming those skills once they are off cooldown, which is mostly applicable to DPS skills.

If you could OP, I would have at least one question regarding ANet’s insistence on the tournament structure in sPvP rather than the tried-and-true, 1v1 MMR-matched, lower rated team picks map queue that is used successfully in so many other popular games.

While it is obvious ANet planned this as a mechanic to generate income via ticket sales, it is also quite obvious at this point that it has severly hampered interest in sPvP. Why not find other means to generate income from the sPvP playerbase w/o crippling the playerbase? Allowing skins to be applied in sPvP was the first step, but go all the way with it, for example they can make it so if you right-click skins in the PvP locker there is an option to buy it for X amount of gems.

Then they can make automated tournaments daily at set times of the day (2 or 3 times to facilitate players from different time zones) with a very low barrier to entry (perhaps a sliding scale where the higher rated you are the less the cost) for QPs, then apply the same mechanic for monthly tournaments with a sliding scale based on QPs or something. This keeps the spirit of the income generating aspect of the game as being 1) entirely optional (skins) or 2) as a means to save time (not having to grind as much rating/QPs to enter the respective tournaments).

Well most Power necros grab the +10% marks damage trait and combined with the high power and crit makes Putrid Mark hit like a truck. Greater Marks also make marks unblockable so it allows you to still DPS through things like the Warrior’s block and such. The 2 builds I switch around depending if I need the stability or not is 30/15/10/0/15 or 30/0/10/0/30. The main thing to grab from curses is the fury on DS trait. If not for that I wouldn’t even go into curses.

And IIRC the targetable well trait makes wells only tick 5x instead of 7x w/o the trait. I’m not sure if this has changed or what, but as a power dagger necro you don’t really need targetable wells.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Skyro.3108:

I feel the remove condition on heal trait is really underwhelming unless combined with mantra of recovery. The vigor on shatter trait IMO is much better as it gives you vigor even with 0 clone shatters with Illusionary Persona and increases your survivability much more with the extra dodges.

While condition removal isn’t abundant in this build, you do have a built in condition removal via combo’ing Focus 5 (whirl finisher) with Focus 4 (light field). Supplemented with Null Field gives you adequate condition removal IMO.

Null field really has no place in this build. All three of my utilities are extremely important, and that is one of the reasons that I take as much condition removal as possible. In another post I discussed what food I use, and my food has a condition removal effect on healing every 10 seconds. When you stack up that effect with the trait of removal, it becomes very difficult to get conditions to stick to me. The whirl finisher in temporal curtain is amazing, but not always reliable to do.

Condition removal is of absolute highest priority in this build, simply because it is a bunker build. There is no innate defense against damaging conditions other than removal, necessitating as much removal as possible. Additionally, cripple and chill both severely impeded my mobility and ability to disengage from a fight at will, becoming extremely dangerous. Lastly, poison interferes with my healing, which is a very important component of how this build works.

Without every last shred of condition removal I can throw together, conditions start to eat this build. Remember that this build is based on actually getting hit and not dodging every attack. Many condition applying attacks have a lot of small hits, making them the ideal situation for retaliation damage. In this build, I want to tank those attacks for my retaliation damage output, and then simply be able to remove the conditions applied after the attack is finished.

I’m speaking from a tPvP perspective where as a bunker mesmer your job would be to sit on points so you don’t have food buffs and you won’t be much disengaging and such as you would in WvW. Still, a trait which removes 1 condition every 21 secs at best is pretty underwhelming no matter how you slice it, especially when you consider the alternative which is basically a trait that virtually gives you perma-vigor. It is however pretty good when paired with Mantra of Recovery due it proc’ing with each charge use, the lower recharge of MoR, and the fact that MoR charges are instant and thus can be used to cleanse important conditions immediately. Of course this isn’t a mantra build though so that is point is moot.

Since I’m sitting on points and tanking damage rather than moving around and avoiding damage this makes combo’ing Focus 5 > Focus 4 very reliable, and why Null Field is also very effective as you will sit in it for its entire duration, plus it combos into another chaos armor. These 2 combined with runes of melandru which is quite effective for short duration conditions such as chill and I’ve found conditions to be quite managable.

I don’t WvW much but personally I think this build (well, with some tweaks like grabbing Restorative Illusions) has much more potential in tPvP than WvW since tPvP bunkers play a more pronounced role. You can also countercomp in tPvP such that you can switch to this build from a shatter build when the opposing team’s strat is to aggressively attack the backpoint with classes that can defeat shatter mesmers 1v1.

1) First off I’m a big fan of Ogre runes for power builds. In virtually any gear setup (in sPvP at least), power adds much more DPS than the equivalent amount of precision (not including proc effects/traits from precision). Thief is nice due to the 6pc bonus but from my tests Ogre gives roughly similar DPS even if you assume 100% uptime on the opponent’s back (which is obviously not a realistic assumption). If attacking from the front Ogre just flat out smokes Thief runes.

2) Certainly 30 in the SR line is nice for the stability on DS (and is great if you’re getting focused and chain CC’ed), but for pure DPS and burst potential (I’m assuming you’re going dagger/wells) going at least 15 in curses is very strong for the fury on DS. You could go 25 in curses to grab target the weak but the tradeoff isn’t worth it since you’ll have to give up more important traits (spectral armor @ 50% or greater marks).

3) The main trait that makes DS1 actually worth using is Unyielding Blast, which gives DS1 piercing and applies 2x vulnerability. As necros are mostly a team fight oriented class I have gotten a ton of mileage from this trait. A spammable, ranged AoE skill that crits for 2-4K per sec is nothing to scoff at. Very useful for blowing up rezzer’s, clones, whatever. But most importantly it gives the Power Dagger/Well Necros the ability to fight at range for extended periods of time rather than just spam staff auto-attack.

I think MH Dagger is in a good place. It’s already a nicely designed MH for a power/wells necro.

The only think I’d like to see changed hasn’t much to do particularly with MH dagger skills but life siphoning in general. IMO life siphons should scale with healing power. This may open up some bunker dagger necro possibilities. Dagger 1 is a fast LF generating auto-attack which is good for a bunker, and Dagger 3 could be used as a defensive tool to get off your full Dagger 2 cast.

So far I think ANet has Condi and Power Necros in a good place. If they can flesh out minion masters and life siphon mechanic (e.g. the death and blood lines) in general it would round out the Necro very nicely in terms of viable builds.

I feel the remove condition on heal trait is really underwhelming unless combined with mantra of recovery. The vigor on shatter trait IMO is much better as it gives you vigor even with 0 clone shatters with Illusionary Persona and increases your survivability much more with the extra dodges.

While condition removal isn’t abundant in this build, you do have a built in condition removal via combo’ing Focus 5 (whirl finisher) with Focus 4 (light field). Supplemented with Null Field gives you adequate condition removal IMO.

Feels like a trolling thread… OP basically adds no context like what class he plays or anything in particular he is having problems with.

Yeah mantras aren’t very viable in tPvP.

Also I think you overestimate the effect of transferring bleeds to caltrops thieves since they have that cleanse in stealth trait.

Ok so I’ve been playing this build a bunch and you’re right Khalifa I finally settled into the same trait allocation as you (30/15/10/0/15). It’s the best burst damage you can get w/o going higher into the curses line and it isn’t worth giving up the utility + survivability in soul reaping (more on that in a min). I’m a min/maxer at heart and through my efforts to min/max I discovered a few things you might want to consider.

First is that I had before running the numbers I had no idea the degree in how superior power was compared to precision and crit dmg. Assuming 50% uptime on fury, Power is valued at 2x precision and 2.5x critical dmg. This is initially what prompted me to settle back into the spite line after testing 30/30 curses/SR. But that led me to take another look at my rune set up to look at my options for power runes, and I found runes of the ogre to provide superior DPS than runes of the thief, even assuming 100% uptime on the targets back which obviously is not a realistic assumption. And by the same token this makes bloodlust sigil superior to the precision variant.

The 2nd is I’ve also settled for the focus as my offhand. You can spec for the 20% CD reduc in the spite line if you wish, but the main reason is because of the instant 12 stack of vulnerability if you use Focus 4 in meele range, and has very nice damage + LF generation to boot. Combined with Well of suffering you can quite close to a full vulnerability stack on your spike target . Very powerful in a coordinated spike (imagine it combined with staff guard for party might and/or party fury with aura share ele… scary indeed). The boon strips and additional chill/snare from Focus 5 is just icing on the cake.

For utilities I’ve been swapping that 3rd slot (rez sig, Well of suff) quite a bit. I’ve settled on 3 options: well of corruption (I like to alternate the two wells for more consistent spikes as dagger 3 has roughly half the CD as the wells), flesh wurm (stun break of choice, but generally not needed) and signet of locust for mobility. BiP I found to be quite underwhelming.

I know you said you settled on epidemic to give you an extra option from ranged but I actually grabbed unyielding blast instead of path of midnight to give me a strong ranged option. I pretty much save my DS 2 skill to coincide with my Dag 3 so a reduction in cooldown there is useless, and I use DS 3 defensively or as a set up for 2 so a reduction there isn’t all that great either. Unyielding blast however gives you a powerful piercing projectile that can be used to burn down rezers, burn through minions/clones etc. It’s pretty potent in a team fight. Plus it stacks 2x vulnerability per hit. With the ample amount of LF generation this build has you have plenty of LF to burn.

I think those were the main tweaks I made. Just thought I’d offer them up since you opened my eyes about this build working in paids.

IIRC signet of illusions “pulses” its effect every 10s, so it’s not always 8-10 secs before it works. It still combos nicely with iDefender since it is so beefy it usually survives until the passive effect kicks in. Also the whole signet showing up in your buff bar is kind of moot. You’re going to have something there regardless (like your perma-retal), and there are many other ways to discern the real player anyway. It may fool some players but these are bad players. I don’t use Signet of Illusions simply because there’s just no room on my bar though.

Now I understand you’re mostly a WvWer, but I’ve adapted it your build for tPvP and I must say it shows potential.

For gear adjustments I’m using power/tough/heal power instead of power/tough/vit for more sustainability, and using runes of melandru for the tough + stun/condi duration reduction as conditions can be a big issue and remove 1 condition on heal trait is simply not enough. I generally slot null field in addition to this, though that slot that I change up depending on the comp I face. My utility bar is pretty tight as 2 of the slots are automatically taken by iDefender and Portal.

For trait adjustments I dropped 10 points from chaos and picked up restorative illusions. The synergy this has with illusionary persona is amazing as it simply tacks on an additional ~1.1K heal (w/ cleric’s ammy) onto each shatter (making for example a 1 clone shatter heal for ~2.5K). Then further combined with the shatter reset @ 50% health trait and you become quite the healing machine. While you do lose a bit of protection uptime you can still get good protection uptime because remember you basically tanking hits on the point so you are getting a lot of chaos armor procs, and I usually combo phase retreat with both chaos storm and null field for 10 addition seconds of chaos armor uptime.

All in all though very nice build! I was looking to make a bunker build due to all the various builds ppl are sending to harass the mesmer in tpvp nowadays (symbol guards, D/D eles, trap rangers, caltrop thieves, etc.) and it is kind of funny how people get confused when they realize they can’t kill me.

When I say DPS I meant average DPS. Your highest hit on a target under 50% will hit higher with 30 spite of course. You have to factor in that you are criting more often with 30 in curses. Also remember target the weak adds 2% dmg per condition, so you have to make some assumptions about that as well. For example if you assume 3 conditions and LF over 5%, that’s already a flat 11% damage bonus. If you assume the 20% damage trait when target is under 50% as a flat 10% bonus damage you can see where I am seeing similar average DPS numbers. Then the big kicker is that you can have permanent fury with the 5s DS trait which is a big average DPS booster.

For pure burst though spite is definitely superior. That’s the trade-off. Plus I use warhorn offhand so curses gives me more utility there with the warhorn trait.

Appreciate your responses though. I look forward to seeing any footage you put together!

Thanks for the quick reply!

I’m not sure why you think 25 might stack is important. There’s no special bonus you get for having max might stacks. The first stack of might is just as beneficial as the last. I guess I’m having trouble following your logic there. DPS is DPS, wherever it comes from.

My disdain for the spite tree is completely lackluster minor traits and really only 1 very good major. My point was that with 30/30 in curses/soul reaping you actually have similar, if not more DPS due to the strong minor traits and 100% uptime on fury. That’s what makes the 5s DS trait such a strong DPS trait.

And I was jumping for joy when you said sigil of rage ICD doesn’t affect sigil of battle so I just tested it again in the mists but unfortunately it does still indeed prevent sigil of battle working

A couple of questions!

-Why BiP over Spectral Wall? 10 might stacks only gives slightly more direct damage than the 10 vulnerability stacks you get from SWall, plus SWall has the ability to provide the team protection. I feel BiP is much stronger on a condition build where you can stack a ton of conditions on enemies first and then pop BiP.

-I think spectral grasp is very good with Dagger necros. There’s so much you can do with such a long range pull with a coordinated team. What are your thoughts? I understand your utility selections since the battle rez is so powerful just wanted your general thoughts on this skill.

-I am what you call a “spite hater.” IMO the trait line is terrible. The only good skill in that line is the GM 20% under 50% dps trait but you can achieve similar DPS by using the 30 in spite and put it into curses and soul reaping and do a 0/30/10/0/30 build due to the extra crit/crit dmg and the target the weak (2% dmg/condi) and strengh of undeath (5% over 50% LF) traits. This also gives you access to GM soul reaping traits which are absolutely fantastic allowing you to have permanent fury or our only in-class access to stability.

-And why Sigil of Battle on the staff? Due to Sigil of Rage’s long cooldown doesn’t this interfere with Sigil of Battle quite often?

Yeah they already stated they will be toning down AoE, and in the current tPvP meta that pretty much means Necros. I don’t think they are going to touch wells but they will probably reduce the radius bonus from Greater Marks.

I’m hoping buff-wise they beef up the Blood Magic line. If it was more viable it would open up so many new playstyles. Minion AI needs to be fixed (hey ranger pet AI finally got fixed so there’s hope!) before doing anything drastic to the Death Magic line. Same with Power line since it is related to many currently unviable builds.

So far we’ve heard ANet state they want Scepter to be a defensive weapon. The scepter cooldown reduction trait also points to it being a condition-spec weapon. Scepter fills a hole in the Mesmer’s arsenal of a defensive, 1h’ed ranged weapon, but it is currently very lackluster. The changes are simple:

-Further adjustments to auto-attack speed (e.g. similar to Necro’s scepter auto-attack). The issue is the link between waiting for the projectile to hit the enemy before the start of the next attack in the chain, so you can either make it instant (like the Necro’s) or further increase projectile speed. The Scepter needs a strong auto-attack because its other skills are very situational.

-Add confusion to first 2 attacks chains to make it a true condition damage weapon and reduce direct damage to balance it out. Currently Scepter is actually a much stronger power-based weapon than a condition one.

-Change Scepter 2 skill to a defensive skill that synergizes with Scepter 3. For example an instant cast shield that blocks the next attack and Blinds the target when you’re struck (and perhaps a small AoE blind centered around the Mesmer if nobody strikes you after X secs). The Scepter 3 skill is nearly unusable in PvP in its current state due to being so easily interrupted and such a change will enhance the usability of both skills.

-Scepter 3 should have a cripple attached to it. It is way to easy to LoS/out-of-range the skill currently. Reduce it’s direct damage as necessary.

I’ve been messing around with Mantra builds quite a bit and one very annoying thing about mantras is the long recharge MoD, MoResolve, MoC. There are a lot of times after a fight that you want to recharge your mantra between fights when it only has 1 charge left but you can’t since you need to wait for a long recharge time.

My suggestions:
-Reduce recharge on mantras to 10s. You can’t have them with no recharge since it will be too easily spammable, but I don’t feel the recharge on MoRecovery (which is 10s) to be too burdensome. You can adjust the cooldown between charge uses to fix any spammable issues. For example even if a mantra has a cooldown of 10s, if you put 5s cooldown between charge uses it has a minimal “spam” time of 5+10+3.25 = 18.25 sec.

-Change Harmonious Mantras to reduce cast time of mantras by 1s. This will give them ~2 sec cast time making them more usable mid-fight, something Mantras sorely need. This will make this trait not absolutely required to use a mantra but still very worthy of its grandmaster trait status.

-Change Mantra Mastery and Protected Mantras into giving passive effects similar to Empowered Mantras. It creates a much more interesting dynamic of when to expend your mantra charges or not, rather than just some passive effect that doesn’t change the way you play at all.

-Rebalance the mantras as necessary. I feel MoResolve is a bit underpowered for example.

They need a ladder first, so people can easily know how high ranked the teams are in a particular match they are spectating, and so that high ranked teams are matched together much more often. Custom servers are also a much higher priority that spectator mode IMO.

If I were you OP I would check back in Feb. They said they are going to be adding a bunch of PvP-related things by Feb so we’ll see what those things are.

I’m saying the devs SHOULD consider the casual player as that is the majority of the playerbase. A lot of people think you should just balance around hardcore players who play 40 hours a week but that isn’t good game design. You want your game to be popular after all. And when I say balance I mean in general balance but also the funness factor.

But at the same time you can’t ignore balance at higher levels where players know the game inside and out. From what I’ve seen and my own personal experiences the majority of strong paid sPvP teams do no think Thieves and Mesmers are incredibly OP. I have issues with things like Portal just being a badly designed skill for the conquest game mode and what not, but that isn’t what people are discussing in this thread.

While clearly some classes have higher initial skill caps, the skill cap for all classes is low enough that it really should not be an issue. What separates the really good players from average ones is knowing your opponent(s) and predicting what they are going to do and your reaction time.

IMO from a game design perspective it’s nice to have some classes with low initial skill caps and some with higher ones. It allows new players to just jump right in with certain classes and be effective. I actually think that if ANet had a few solid sPvP templates for each class it would be a really nice addition for newer players jumping in sPvP for the first time but ANet has so many more important things they need to work on.

Has ANet ever said they balance around 5v5? They balance the class roles around the game mode – conquest. How do you balance a bunker vs a roamer, a roamer vs a glass, support vs dps, AoE vs single-target, etc. The game isn’t about 1v1, it’s about holding points, and there is relatively little time spent in a match where there is a true 5v5.

Khyras.8021:

Skyro.3108:

Personally I like fighting Mesmers and Thieves, it is an interesting cat and mouse game trying to bait out certain skills. But of course you have to know what to be looking for. I think this is where most casual players find issues. They don’t go the extra mile to learn their opponent and in that case thieves and mesmers can be very frustrating to play against.

I guess their overabundance in hot join can get old pretty quickly though, but I avoid hot join unless I’m just testing a new build or something. The majority of the playerbase is in hot join though so this is where the devs have to balance catering to casuals and people who know how to play correctly.

You just called people who agree with OP a bunch of noobs who dont know how to play against thieves and mesmers.There is no way that game is actually better without cheap classes like mesmers and thieves?
Players like you are the reason why i dont like MMOs.You comment disgusts me, sir.

I wasn’t directing anything at anybody. OP is commenting on the funness factor of playing against mesmers and thieves. Not everybody shares that opinion. I was offering the counterpoint that some people, like myself, find fighting thieves and mesmers interesting, and that interest is derived from knowing my opponent.

Personally I like fighting Mesmers and Thieves, it is an interesting cat and mouse game trying to bait out certain skills. But of course you have to know what to be looking for. I think this is where most casual players find issues. They don’t go the extra mile to learn their opponent and in that case thieves and mesmers can be very frustrating to play against.

I guess their overabundance in hot join can get old pretty quickly though, but I avoid hot join unless I’m just testing a new build or something. The majority of the playerbase is in hot join though so this is where the devs have to balance catering to casuals and people who know how to play correctly.

Khyras.8021:

Skyro.3108:

It’s not 1v1 or 5v5, they balance around the conquest game mode. I think they are trying to put each class in certain roles based around this game mode, i.e. bunker, roamer, etc.

Specific XvX balancing is for deathmatch type games.

Every time someone says they balance game around conquest mode my stomach starts to turn,because that is the stupidest thing i have ever heard.What happens when new mode is introduced like CTF? How you gonna balance the game around conquest AND CTF for example?Or are you saying 1 game mode with different maps is all we get from GW 2? I would rather have 3 game mods on the same map than 1 game mod on 15 maps.Just blance the game around 1vs1 (or try to do so to the best of your ability) and give us more pvp modes that are actually fun to play before its too late and you end up with your few “top teams” playing on empty servers.

So far ANet hasn’t said anything about new game modes unfortunately. I do think new games modes would be fun and bring back more of the casual audience even if they don’t fully support it with rankings and tourneys and such. I am hoping they give the users a lot of customization in custom servers to create different game modes but I know that is just a pipedream.

But the point remains that there if very very little reason to balance 1v1 unless your official game type is 1v1 deathmatch. In no other scenario does it make sense. Even CTF you’re going to have spec/classes specifically for this role which has little to do with 1v1 balance. It’s quite simple from a game design perspective, you fit the classes in certain roles and balance those roles around your supported game types whether that be conquest, CTF, or deathmatch. And even in deathmatch you would balance around team vs team, not 1v1. I don’t get why people don’t understand this. Was the medic in TF some 1v1 juggernaut?

SecondtoNone.7549:

mjharrison.3209:

1) remove downed state
2) buff HP across the board by 30%
3) fixed.

I’d be willing to bet sPVP without downed state would be far more popular than current game type.

That sounds like the best thing since sliced bread.

And hopefully you all get your wish in the upcoming custom servers.

Personally I think the downed state is great at higher level, organized play (class balance among downed states being an entirely different dicussion). However I do think it is simply not a fun mechanic for casuals and PUGs.

It’s not 1v1 or 5v5, they balance around the conquest game mode. I think they are trying to put each class in certain roles based around this game mode, i.e. bunker, roamer, etc.

Specific XvX balancing is for deathmatch type games.

The only way a Mesmer can really instaburst you down is with Mirror Images, otherwise his clones/phantasms won’t all be in meele range of you to instantly shatter. So it’s not really “you can’t meele when they have 2+ clones out” because Shatter Mesmers will always have a high production rate of clones but they won’t be all be in meele range of you.

And 3K+ damage mind wracks that’s buggy. Even with full might stacks you can’t reach even close to that with a full 3 clone shatter.

I’ve been using this to combo with idefender and retal trait for phantasms when I was goofing off with a Phantasm build. They become quite beefy with it.

Just remove it completely. This is coming from a longtime back point Mesmer. It makes Mesmers the de facto back point guard and pigeonholes the class. It restricts class and strategic diversity and cause problems on future maps. Perhaps change it into a shorter-range teleport similar to shadowstep or something.

Ross Biddle.2367:

The block is great against channelled attacks. Like kill shot, or if you see a backstab coming. Also since it summons a clone, if you dodge roll after the block (and have clone on dodge), you’ve suddenly got 2 clones available for a shatter. There’s plenty of versatility with it, if you’re creative enough.

Did you even read the OP? That has nothing to do with the issues outlined in the OP.

Also if you dodge immediately after the block you actually interrupt your own “cast” of the counterattack and thus would not have 2 clones. You have to block… wait… and then dodge. This is just another example of how the skill is very clunky to use.

ANet’s overall design philosophy of the Scepter has not been clear. Early on it seemed to be the 1h’ed condition-based Mesmer’s weapon of choice with condition being applied from its auto-attack. Currently it is actually a much, much stronger power/crit based weapon than a condition-based one. This isn’t bad per se as Mesmers do not currently have a 1h’ed, ranged, power-based weapon, but the gap of a 1h’ed condition-based weapon is obviously a gap that could potentially be filled in the future.

What I am here to talk about however is the block skills (both Illusionary Counter and Illusionary Riposte), and why it is the real reason Scepter/offhand Sword don’t see more play. It is an ok design concept but they are implemented very, very poorly. The issues with the block skills are:

1) The counterattack has ~600 range, has a delay b/w block and counterattack, and needs LoS. This makes it very hard to land, and completely ineffective vs multi-hit attacks as you’ll have to eat many attacks between the delay if you want to land the counterattack.
2) There is a delay between skill activation and the block effect, making the skill very cumbersome to use as a defensive tool.
3) The secondary activation blind/daze (Counterspell/Counter Blade) also suffers from the slow projectile. These all cause the skill to be quite useless for any strategic play, such as blocking or blinding a critical attack. I assume it is a projectile due to it blinding/dazing in a line, but it would be a lot more useful as an instant single target skill.

Improvements that could be made from a combination of the suggestions below:
1) Remove the delay between skill activation and block effect to allow for responsive blocking
2) Make the skill block all attacks for its entire duration so it can actually be used as a true defensive skill
3) Make the counterattack a secondary skill activation (similar to the blind/daze effect) after blocking at least 1 attack so that the player has control of when and where to use the skill
4) Increase the counterattack range to 900
5) Reduce the damage of the counterattack as necessary due to the higher defensive potential of the skill, or have it apply some other type of effect
6) Make the secondary activated blind/daze instant, but single target

If ANet wants to keep the design flavor of a big counterattack and not a defense-oriented skill they could simply not use suggestion #2 and #4. They could even mix them up, making the Scepter block skill a defensive-version block skill using all the suggestions above and the Sword block an offensive-version and not use suggestion #2 and #4 as noted above.

TL:DR – The cumbersome delays and range limitations around the Mesmer’s 2 block skills make the skills ineffective and simply not fun to use and should be changed. Simple number tweaks are not the answer here.